[Tfug] List etiquette: start a new thread!

[Matt Jacob]

It seems like there's been a lot of these lately, so here's my pissy 
Monday morning rant after running out of coffee at work and being 
severely low on caffeine.

If you want to reply to an existing thread or an ongoing list 
discussion, please use the "reply" feature of your MUA (mail user 
agent). If you'd like to start a new thread with a different subject 
line, please use your client's "new / write / compose" feature. It may 
seem easier to just hit reply and change the subject line there, but 
there's something going on behind the scenes that ends up being annoying 
for some of us.

For you see, some of us read the list in a threaded mode where related 
messages are kept together in the same "thread". When you reply to a 
message, your client appends the In-Reply-To: header and inserts the 
message ID of the message you're replying to. My client picks up on that 
and injects your "new" post into the same thread as the message you 
replied to.

In real life, this would be like driving along on I-10 for a couple 
hundred miles and then suddenly discovering you're on I-8, except that 5 
miles later, you're actually on I-10 again. (It's not the best 
comparison, but like I said, I'm running a little low on vitamin C 
[=caffeine] this morning.)

Anyway, the moral of the story is this: don't hit reply when you intend 
to start a new topic.

Happy posting!

Matt